Gifford is the founder and chief operating officer of ActiVote.
There are nearly 20,000 cities, towns and villages across the United States and many of them have local elections this year. The mayors and councilors and school board members that will be elected this year will do more to impact your daily lives than the folks we send to Washington, D.C. They will influence what our kids are taught in school. They will decide how much money to allocate to safety versus infrastructure versus recreation versus education. We will see these people in our grocery stores, our school plays and concerts, and our local playgrounds.
Many of these candidates running for office are either not paid at all or compensated very little for their time and effort. They run for office because they are public servants and believe in their communities and the benefit that they can bring. Since this is an off year election, many of these elections will be decided by only a handful of votes from the dedicated few who will turn up this election cycle.
This means that you can have a big impact on the outcome for you and your community!
Here are five reasons why you should be civically engaged this November!
- I’m not even sure if I have an election? In even years it is much simpler as we all know that every American has an opportunity to vote. In odd years it can be more difficult but we do know that there are elections in over 40 states. It is worth the time to check if you have an election this month. ActiVote is a simple tool where you can check your elections and sign up for reminders for all future elections.
- My vote doesn’t matter, why bother?
Local elections are frequently decided by just a few votes. In 2017, a Virginia House of Delegates race ended in a TIE with more than 23,000 votes cast. In 2019, a Boston city Councilor won after a recount by a single vote. In 2016, a Vermont state house seat was determined by a single vote. That same seat with the same two candidates was also decided by a single vote (the other way) in 2010. So your vote does matter when it comes to these races on the ballot! - I’m not sure what these local officials do?
There can be dozens of different offices on the ballot and it can be tough to know exactly what each office does. Here’s a quick overview of the most common offices you will see this November: The Mayor is the executive of your municipality and is the end in charge of the budget and key appointments to local government. The Council is the legislative body for your local government and will propose rules and regulations and spending proposals that will govern the city. The School Board is the body that oversees the budget, the policies and the hiring/firing of the superintendent. - I’m not sure who to vote for. I’m worried I might cast the “wrong” vote?
Often local elections are nonpartisan which takes away the simplest “cheat sheet” many voters use to make their choice - party affiliation. Indeed, a recent study showed that not feeling prepared enough is a barrier to voting in local elections. There are a few quick and simple things you can do to combat this challenge. First, ask around to others in your community who they are voting for and why. That’s a quick (and social!) way to find out more about who others are supporting. There are fun civic tech solutions, such as ActiVote, which help you see what is on your ballot and easily read about the candidates. Another way to filter down the candidates is to look to local organizations you support and see if they have made endorsements in the race. It could be your Congressional representative or your community volunteering organization who has endorsed candidates in the race. Finally, if your community still has a local newspaper they will often have candidate profiles that you can read. - But I don’t have an election this cycle?
That’s OK, you’re off the hook from voting. But there are a few things you can still do to be engaged. Do you have friends or family in another state or municipality? Give them a call and ask them if they are prepared to vote. The most effective way to get out the vote is for someone to hear from a person they know and trust.
Voting is a habit that you can form. Each opportunity is one where you can take another step in your civic journey. While we would love for everyone to vote in every race on the ballot, that shouldn’t stop one from voting if there is a single candidate or race you feel passionate about. Voting should feel good. Voting should make one feel empowered that this is the moment your voice is heard.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.